There’s lots of one off pieces that capture people’s attention. But I’ve seen little in the serial, episodic department to thrill and inspire me to consider a slightly more resilient and sustainable existence.

And my last blog reminded me of some of the reasons for why.

I faintly praised the recent alignment of the Thomas The Tank Engine franchise and the 17 Global Sustainability Goals. The reason for the faintness lay in the need of someone to reengineer the narratives and characters to make them more ‘correct’ – balanced, even, fair and ultimately, possibly anodyne?

Re-engineering narratives and characters to remove friction, discomfort, distaste – the inappropriate and the sometimes highly imperfect humanity of them – leaves a massive hole in the realm of sustainable communications.

In the blog I referred to what I see as a fundamental truth. Doing good does not require everyone to be insufferably ‘good’.

Bad is good, especially in storytelling. Bad provides friction. Discomfort and imperfection make for more interesting narratives. Fact. Ask anyone who has to do this for a living.

And ironing out the creases of our imperfect humanity –our need to swear and cuss, our inappropriate and sometimes sleepwalk stereotyping; our baseness, our old prejudices and new loathings; our lazy referencing; erasing all of that makes no sense to me.

People love a good baddy. In fact our waking dislike of goody-goodies mostly outweighs our dislike of baddies.

This came to me like a rather late, lazy lightning bolt [ my lightning bolt had obviously chosen the slowest Southern Rail train, two buses and a walk] as opposed to the one that once released from the hands of the gods, scorches through the sky to light up what it strikes like a Christmas Tree [a theologically and culturally specific reference that may exclude some rather arch followers of monotheistic faiths other than the Christian one that bore the cultural ritualism of the Christmas Tree but I’m not changing it – as in this lies half of my point].

The lazy bolt struck me while in the middle of a conversation with Mark Downes, an old colleague and friend of mine. We were discussing how to develop his Alphabravos idea further – develop the story arcs and the characters.

Now the Alphabravos is Mark’s idea for an episodic Children’s film/tv series designed to entertain and educate children about creating a more sustainable world, using 5 key Alphabravo characters and a slew more for good measure.

What struck me was that our focus lay in the purposefully decent, cool and quirky good guys – the Alphabravos themselves. And therein lay a missed trick.

The baddie was our best bit. The mad, bad and dangerous to know Mdudu was the greatest unrealised character in the whole idea. In fact, in true megalomaniac socio-psychopathic fully paid up narcissist fashion, it was allabout him.

Yes, the individual Alphabravo characters would allow various children of various [self identified] genders to choose their favourite character to emulate and through which to learn the behaviours of a more sustainable life, but Mdudu was the flame that the moths would fly to. The deeper, richer, most enduring and attractive human element in the whole thing.

Because thats what we do. We need the baddie to be the best character because in most traditional storytelling, the baddie is usually us at our ugly worst. Our unvarnished heavily flawed now – the perfect arrive starting point – and the heroes are us as we could be. The baddie is the measure by which we mark our hope; our optimism of what could be and the journey to it.

So baddies are the best.

So in Alphabravo world that meant that Mdudu, in all his camp, scratchy, self-obsessed sightly savant, childish, distracted, brutal and nihilistic ugliness was the most beautiful thing that we have.

And he must be developed. But more importantly than that, he must be protected. Because if the PC Police got half a whiff of him, heres how the conversation might go:

So Mdudu, great name. What’s that about?

Mdudu. yeah he’s our big bad baddie. We love the name. Its actually a Swahili name, originally from the Arabic, for a large parasitic insect.

Hmmmn. Well that’s not very cool. A little ethnic stereotyping there perhaps?

Huh?

The blight on the world comes from Africa and the Middle East. Is that your point? A continent exclusively populated by despots, megalomaniacs,tyrants, environmental spoilers and murderers?That won’t do. Especially when your baddie is shaped by a western, white hand. Oh no. No No No! Thats just perpetuating ancient prejudices and colonial propoganda. So there’s a real ethnic defamation issue here. Anyway. Let’s keep it positive. Lets see if we can salvage this. Why is he called that?

Because it rhymes with ‘poo’.

Well thats very mature!

Well its not meant to be. This is for 6-8 year olds. Everything is a fart gag and a poo joke.

Is it though? Really?

Yes. And I forgot to include bogies [boogers to our American cousins].

But that is so…so, infantile

We can’t go telling a 6 year old that Mdudu is a socio-psychopathic megalomaniacal destroyer of the planet’s natural capital, who lays waste to communities through flood, famine, war, pestilence and environmental degradation. Its far easier to say Mdudu is a big fat poo.

I’m sorry – a what?

A big fat poo.

Well that’s incredibly insensitive.

What is?

Calling someone big and fat? We just don’t appreciate that kind of language. Very negative. Judgemental. That really won’t do.

No, really! First off, why is he a He? Pretty standard gender stereotyping of human tyranny and venality as being the sole domain of the male if you ask me. Psychopathic elitism. Ergo; Man strong woman weak. Sexism – pure and simple. And its all so SENSATIONALIST! Why can’t it be more, well, relevant. Laying waste to the world? Who does that? And I really don’t appreciate the recidivist cliche of baddies being camp – obviously playing back into some post-WWII caricature of the cruel, lisping Nazi Gauleiter – and making him clumsy to boot – an object of ridicule! Surely we are more advanced than this?

Nope. And I didn’t mention the speech impediment by the way. You said lisping. Not me. But I like it!

That’s not helping. And ‘big’ and ‘fat’ are clearly, well, fattest and sizist, so they are a No from us.

What?

And ‘poo’? Really. Can;t we do better than Poo?

We? When did my Me idea become a We idea?

Wisdom of the Crowds is everything – surely you know that? And wheres the redemption in all of this. Surely Mdudu is on a journey to redemption, no? On a journey to, errmmm, a less pooey future?

Not really. His job is to be what we kick against. What we fight. The possibility for bad in all of us. His job is to be BAD!!! What do you want him to be? A giant, humourless, flawless, good natured global gender-fluid mostly misunderstood Being (as we wouldn’t want to offend a species or genus – insect or otherwise – now would we): a Being of no real provenance or roots or ethnic specificity, with redeeming features like attending Mindfulness counselling when he’s not trying lay waste to the world?

You’re doing that sensationalist thing again – but yes, so let’s work with this. Collaborate and co-create it. So Sure. let’s say for example we keep him in the rhyming world. You could call the baddie Being ‘Do’ instead of Mdudu. It’s positive, action orientated, non gender specific. And if you really have to make a poo rhyme you still can. And yes, mindfulness counselling sounds terrific. Positive attributes. Striving for better. Optimistic.

OK so let me get this straight: the baddy is called Do, as in ‘doing’; is a broadly good natured slightly misunderstood gender non specific with no ethnic or genus specificity, whom, between doing vaguely unpleasant non-sensational things, attends self-help groups for mindfulness and anger management. And perhaps runs a Clean Up campaign in his local park?

Perfect.

Wow.

What?

You just sucked the light out of the world. I want to go and hide in a very, very dull, dark room.

Nope. Not Batman. Or the Dark Knight. This is not a homo-erotic entreat to the wiry, muscular Christian Bale, or a slightly sloppy hug for big bad Ben [pre or post cocktail].

And though I feel that Keaton’s socio-psychopathic gift to the Burton Batmans was remarkable [is it me or do the Burton-Batmans sound like a rather smart family from Cape Cod?), and gorgeous George is always worth a mention, it is the small plasticky, modular superhero who has my heart.

Lego Batman is petulant, childish, misguided, isolated, narcissistic to the level of a clinical pathology BUT he’s still fundamentally a good and fun guy – and the ultimate role model, both literally [he’s modelled out of plastic pieces] ethically [he’s aways trying to shut down or thwart some toxic shocker or other] and symbolically [the Bat Sign is a beacon in the world that says bad awful things will always get their just and plastic desserts in the end].

Unlike the Dark Knight – he who broods in an enormous bat-winged cape on various V tall buildings – Lego Batman’s super-power resides in his all round, kinda clumsy unfunny dork-like coolness – or as a social strategist might say, his social reach. He is simply a lot more attractive and palatable to a far wider range of type and age-groups of people.

Lets face it, the highly cinematic and terribly troubled Bruce Wayne can get a little ‘BORING’ – but as soon as he is rendered in very shiny black plastic, has ‘Nope nope nope no no nope no Nope’ tantrums and crunches his way through microwaved Lobster claws, shell on, whats not to like?

Lego Batman’s love of industrial metal & grind core, and working with black, black, black and very dark grey, though broody and nihilistic in some ways, is really quite chirpy and redeeming.

And sure, he has a tendency to pop off with his Star Wars buddies just at the moment when he’s meant to be helping his Lego Movie buddy Emmet save everyone – and he struggles to maintain a text-book balanced and mutually beneficial relationship – but who wouldn’t; and doesn’t sometimes.

But my main love for characters like Lego Batman is rooted in their ability to be transcendent – to be able to be dark and light and left and right and rare and middle and base and grubby and funny and sad and inspiring; all at once.

It is an ability that the realm of Sustainability, Social Impact and those who’ve tasked themselves with rebalancing society could do with embracing far more.

The sustainability agenda needs all the transcendence it can get in the human department.

Though enormous steps forwards have been made [even getting it on the agenda of some corporations took decades of work and the relentless commitment of some very professionally brave people], there is still a deep division between the engineered integrity of the organisational, systemic and material change being undertaken at scale in large organisations and corporations and the insight and subtlety of the communicating voice and tone of the messaging that announces and celebrates these transformations for all the world to see.

It is the lightness of touch and the ability of characters like Lego Batman to appeal to all age groups in a very human and funny way that I find the most powerful. Especially in this space. The chiaroscuro of human nature, including the more childish and incorrect aspects of who we are as creatures needs to be front and centre to engage people.

But there seems to be a view amongst those trying to do something serious in the world that levity and playfulness diminishes or infantilises otherwise serious issues or points to be made. And that even when something childlike is to be used, it has to be ‘corrected’ in a trough of vanilla moralising and social engineering to make it finally palatable to a pungently consensual audience of rare intelligence.

The recent Thomas The Tank work around the Global Sustainability Goals, though wholly admirable, still ended up quite prim, was overly gender engineered, and in doing so ended up lackinghumanity for me.

Friction is a human truth – friction tension and raw energy are essential in characterisations – even in children’s characters. The Homogenisation and cultural symmetry being inflicted on a lot of characterisations in pursuit of correctness these days seems inhuman to me. Humanity is imbalanced in so many highly nuanced and inextricable ways that to remove all imbalance between good and bad seems a fruitless pursuit.

Roald Dahl was the master of exploring dissonant and highly complex narratives inside beautiful whimsical and ultimately charming storytelling. The unvarnished nature and grimness of some of his characters made the stories all the more compelling.

Is Lego Batman on a par with the conflicted beauty of BFG or the moral ambivalence of Willy Wonka, the staggering and mystical precocity of Matilde and the creature narcissism of the Fantastic Mr Fox? Probably not.

But I’d still like to put Lego Batman forwards as the new prince [or princess; croissant or cork wedge shoe, depending on what gender he is identifying with at any given time] of sustainable communications.

I would rather have the 17 UN Global Sustainability Goals unpacked by the schlocky, childish, self-obsessed and mostly black plastic Lego Batman to a soundtrack by Ensturzende Neubauten than be cudgelled quietly by the imperious correctness of the reengineered Thomas The Tank Engine.

The Sustainability Vigilante picking on poor unsuspecting people with utterly inappropriate levels of vigilantism, weaponry and violent attrition for even the smallest infringement of a Global Sustainability Goal objective could be VERY funny.

Commissioner Gordon’s wife bins three perfectly recyclable containers…dun dun dahhhhhhh…without rinsing them!!!……arrggghhhh …cue trip hammer drum riff and crunching guitars…the roof ripped off the apartment block, a salvo of bat rockets pummelling the front room, followed by bat-swooping beatings metered out to her and everyone else in the block for good measure.

Lego Batman stringing up the old man from the Soda Shop as a highly sexually-suspect chauvinist and patroniser of women [how can I help you this fine sunny morning little lady?] or battering three men to a pulp with Bat hammers because they were found to be using face Scrub with Micro-beads could make for highly entertaining mini episodes of a whole series of ‘GSG themed’ Lego Batman content. We’d still get the point. But we’d also manage it with a little bumpiness and some conflicted humanity.

Doing good things and being a force for good in the world is not predicated on being insufferably GOOD. Goodness needs a foil to be real to the majority of people. People can learn immeasurably good things from bad or flawed people. And good people can only find their edges when confronted by bad things and people. The friction is essential.Adopting a Pilgrim approach to communicating good things is not the answer. But we are still doing it.

Perhaps the pilgrim piety that is still shaping sustainability communications is the same malaise that is rendering out safe space thinking in universities so that children and young people grow up believing that it is also possible to get through life without ever having to listen to something we disagree with or find unpalatable – simply by forcibly exorcising it from our immediate society – and see that as a ‘good’ thing. Dunno. But, as history has shown us, both the ‘Crusader’ thing and seemingly benign regimes where control is increasingly applied to blot out dissenting voices, when done with little or no humour and a highly tuned sense of irony, tend to end badly most of the time.

So blah blah blah. We must learn to speak of sustainability in human terms without homogenising and cleansing it of all human flaw and friction.

If we are to cross the chasm and move to engaging a far, far broader church of people and inspiring them to happily act upon more sustainable lifestyles it has to feel less goody goody and less pious.

We need to ‘lighten up’ and be prepared to be messy – because being human is messy. And we’re humans first and foremost.